Animal rights activists have to live with the reality that American public opinion strongly supports the use of animals in research, as long as the animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The good news for animal advocates is the qualifying clause "do not suffer unnecessarily," which means most people do care whether or not the research needs to be going on in the first place, and they are concerned about the animal's suffering.

For most people, necessary research is directed to finding cures for human diseases. But much of the most ethically disquieting animal research has no direct applicability to human disease. For example, in order to study the neural control of eye movements, rhesus monkeys at the University of California San Francisco for the last 20 years have undergone coil implantations in both eyes, multiple craniotomies for in-depth electrode placement, head immobilization surgeries where screws, bolts and plates are directly attached to the skull and water deprivation so that they will visually track moving objects.

Most of us can't even bear to look at a picture of these monkeys with their electrode-implanted brains and bolted heads struggling to perform their eye exercises in a desperate effort to get water. Disingenuous rationalization for inflicting such suffering invariably points the possibility that someday somehow the results will lead to a cure for Alzheimer's disease, or some other human affliction.

Advocates for animal research like to emphasize that most experiments involve rats or mice, and that, for example at the University of California San Diego, less of 1 percent of animals used in teaching or research are monkeys, dogs or cats. But monkey research is big business at San Diego's Salk Institute for Biological Research, where it goes on out of sight and away from public scrutiny. And sat UCSD it took a major public protest, newspaper articles and editorial and years of internal dissent to get the medical school to stop killing dogs in its freshman physiology and pharmacology courses. Those dogs endured lifetimes of caged confinement prior to their vivisection and death, and none of this suffering had anything to do with research. They were all being killed for mere teaching demonstrations.

To its eternal credit, the UCSD Faculty Council and School of Medicine reviewed the dog lab issue in 2003, after considerable adverse publicity. Recognizing that 95 percent of U.S. medical schools taught freshman pharmacology without killing any animals, let alone dogs, and 82 percent of physiology courses were similarly cruelty-free, both groups recommended that dog labs not be included as part of the core curriculum, and accordingly that recommendation was honored, effective in 2003.

The pharmacology department still offers a separate elective dog-vivisection and euthanasia lab so students determined to kill dogs won't miss the opportunity, but happily only seven out of 125 medical students made that lethal choice this year, and while it is sad to report that five dogs were killed, that's a far cry from the 50 to 60 that had previously been routinely destroyed.

Some minimal safeguards for research animals exist, at least in theory, since the federal Animal Welfare Act mandates that Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees must approve all use of animals in research and teaching. Animal researchers themselves sometimes grudgingly admit that such oversight has ended some animal abuse, and that the days of throwing conscious dogs down elevator shafts to study trauma are thankfully over.

But the regulatory deck is stacked against the animals, since membership of these committees is comprised overwhelmingly of animal research scientists themselves, and a committee of guardian foxes may not have the best interest of the chickens in a henhouse at heart. These committees' theoretical emphasis on humane research is itself something of an oxymoron, since the word humane means to treat with kindness, mercy or consideration, and if humane treatment were a priority, the monkeys, dogs, cats, etc. would not be experimented on in the first place.

The Animal Welfare Act and other legislation controlling animal use in research and teaching endorse replacement, reduction and refinement. Implicit in this endorsement is the sentiment that it would be better if we could avoid animal use altogether. But to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and scientists trained to use animals are unlikely to seek alternatives.

That's why it took the broader prospective of hundreds of protesting physicians and the faculty council, etc., to eliminate routine dog vivisection at UCSD over the protests of non-physician animal research oriented basic scientists. Similarly, monkey vivisectors will not surrender their drills, electrodes, bolts and screws until the public, who, after all, pays for the experiments, tells them to stop.

It's the obligation of those who care deeply about these animals to watch-dog the researchers and let the public know that what might be necessary for an individual scientist's prestige and career may be insufficient justification for intense animal suffering.

The public should know that research in the name of science leaves behind tortured and broken bodies. When they talk about inflicting harm on animals as a necessary evil in research, the evil is real enough and the research had better be necessary.

Hansen is a professor of neurosciences and pathology at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.